XII.
The recognition of the error of the rational knowledge helped me to free myself from the seduction of idle speculation. The conviction that the knowledge of the truth could be found only through life incited me to doubt the correctness of my life; but what saved me was that I managed to tear myself away from exclusiveness and to see the real life of the working people and to understand that that alone was the real life. I saw that if I wanted to comprehend life and its meaning, I must live, not the life of a parasite, but the real life, and accept the meaning which real humanity has given to it and, blending with that life, verify it.
At that same time the following happened with me: during all the period of that year, when I asked myself nearly every minute whether I had not better make an end of myself by means of the noose or the bullet, my heart, side by side with the train of thoughts and of observations, of which I have spoken, was tormented by an agonizing feeling. This feeling I cannot name otherwise than the search after God.
I say that this search after God was not a reflection, but a feeling, because this search did not result from the train of my thoughts,—it was even diametrically opposed to it,—but from the heart. It was a feeling of terror, of orphanhood, of loneliness amidst everything foreign, and of a hope for somebody’s succour.
Although I was fully convinced of the impossibility of
